Remember when Facebook changed all of our default email accounts to their own, unused system, without informing any of us? That was fun! But it looks like the problem could be much wider and more damaging than it first seemed.

Apparently since nobody wants or needs a Facebook email address, Zuckerberg and co have decided the only way to get people to use their substandard service is to delete the other email address already stored on your phone.

More than $87,000 worth of the virtual currency known as Bitcoin was stolen after online bandits penetrated servers belonging to Bitcoinica, prompting its operators to temporarily shutter the trading platform to contain the damage.

Friday's theft came after hackers accessed Bitcoinica's production servers and depleted its online wallet of 18,547 BTC, as individual Bitcoin units are called, company officials said in a blog post published on Friday. It said the heist affected only a small fraction of Bitcoinica's overall bitcoin deposits and that all withdrawal requests will be honored once the platform reopens.

dynamo52 writes: I have been tasked with replacing a managed WiFi system for a mid-sized hotel. They have already selected Comcast to provide a 100mbps connection which unfortunately must come in at one corner of the property which I would estimate covers approximately 4-5 acres. The hotel plans to provide this service for free so there is not the need for any type of billing management systems or the like though it should be secured enough that the parking lot does not become a free WiFi hotspot. Additionally, there is no ethernet infrastructure in place. The existing APs (hidden away in proprietary encasements) seem to be connected via telephone lines and the owners have strongly indicated they would prefer that no new wiring be installed.

Have any Slashdotters implemented similar systems? Specifically, what hardware did you use and what special considerations should I take in designing this system?

dynamo52 writes: "Now when you look at Microsoft today they do more to secure their software than anyone. They're the model for how to do it. They're not perfect; there's room for improvement. But they are definitely doing more than anybody else in the industry, I would say. From an internal process in how they go about auditing their code and securing software from a technical perspective, they do have one of the best models. The area they still have room for improvement is around time lines of how long it takes for them to fix things."

Marc Maiffret is now pointing to Adobe and Apple as being companies who are lacking in the security department. "They are starting to get black eyes with people saying Adobe is a bigger worry than Microsoft is at the moment, which I agree with. As those things are happening, Adobe and Apple and other companies are starting to pay attention and care more. But a year ago, it was still very much a marketing thing. People from both companies treated it as a marketing problem. They didn't have good technical structures behind the scenes."

In turn, all the black holes found so far in our universe--from the microscopic to the supermassive--may be doorways into alternate realities.

I had a similar thought one time based on a mathematical model I saw while reading a book on string theory. I also considered that each successive black hole could cause a dimension to "collapse". (i.e. our universe would be derived from a black hole in a universe with 4 spatial dimensions) Of course, I am not a physicist but it is interesting to see that they have similar ideas.

From the article: "...to this day no one actually knows what dark energy is, or where it comes from. They propose that there is no such thing as dark energy at all, and we're looking at things backwards." "Senovilla proposes that we have been fooled into thinking the expansion of the universe is accelerating, when in reality, time itself is slowing down."

"...the appearance of acceleration is caused by time itself gradually slowing down, like a clock with a run-down battery.

From the introduction: "Naively one could envision a spacecraft with an exotic power generator that could create the necessary energies to locally manipulate the extra dimension(s). In this way, an advanced spacecraft would expand/contract the compactified spacetime around it, thereby creating the propulsion effect."

It kind of reminds me of the time Professor Farnsworth said "The ship stays in place, and the universe moves around it."

dynamo52 writes: I am a freelance network admin who mainly services small business clients. Over the last few months, I have been noticing that anytime I have run any type of bandwidth testing for clients with Comcast accounts, the results have been amazingly fast; with some connections, Speakeasy will report up to 15Mbps down and 4Mbps up. Of course, clients get nowhere near this performance in everyday usage.

Upon further investigation, it appears that Comcast delivers this bandwidth only for a few seconds after any new request and it is immediately throttled down. The only way to get any type of accurate estimates are to actually download and upload a significantly large file (100MB+). Doing so yields results more in line with expectations (usually about 1.2Mbps down and about 250Kbps up but it varies).

My main question is this: Is there any valid reason Comcast would front load transfers in this way, or is it merely an effort to prevent end users from being able to accurately assess their bandwidth? Also, does anybody know of other ISPs that use similar practices? This can be quite annoying when trying to determine whether a small client really needs to switch over to a T1 or if their current ISP will suffice.